Forecast

Letters to the Editor: The long view, Ways to correct state education formula

on April 20, 2017

To the Editor:

I am 99, so I’ve seen the best of our great country, and then, in the last eight years, the worst. We have a brave new president trying to accomplish what he was elected to do. Now comes Chuck Schumer with his gang of crybabies. They can’t give up the rejection of their poor idol, Hillary.

I understand their grief, their sorrow, but they can hope a better day for them is coming.

So for now they can drown their anger. Do they love only themselves and hate the American people they serve? Seems like time to stand tall and help, not hinder the work of government. As President Roosevelt said in 1941 after the attack on Pearl Harbor: “It’s infamy.”

Jene Eckenfelder

Westport

Ways to correct state education formula

To the Editor:

I support a single, inclusive funding formula that provides state funding based on precise student need. As Connecticut works to right its fiscal ship, addressing how we fund public education is essential to improving the accountability, transparency and productivity of our state. Our children and communities count on a funding formula that is predictable and ensures schools receive state funds on schedule every year.

2) Student-Weighted Supplemental Funding: additional funding for students who require greater resources to learn and thrive in school, including students living in poverty, English Language Learners, special education students and gifted and talented students;

3) Equitable Division of Local-State Funding: a reasonable division of education costs between local and state resources based on a community’s ability to fund its schools; and

4) Effective and Timely Implementation: a commitment to fully funding a single formula and an implementation schedule to grant this funding.

There is a petition by a group of people to amend the hunting ordinance so they can trap and kill coyotes. I urge the Westport News to continue their coverage of this important issue. The more coverage the better. The petitioners have put a great deal of time and effort into their movement. They have demonstrated that they are aggressive or they would not have carried their petition this far. They are not about to stop now until they get what they want. They may succeed politically. However the coyotes will prove them wrong after they recolonize. Their population will not decrease at all.

The RTM is the legislative body for the town of Westport. They must decide whether or not to amend the hunting ordinance and allow the petitioners to trap and kill coyotes.

I get the feeling that enough but not all legislators will vote in favor of amending the ordinance to allow coyote trapping and it will pass. However I also have a very strong feeling that their amended ordinance to allow for the trapping and killing of coyotes will specifically limit it only to that small group of aggressive petitioners. In other words the legislators who vote to amend will go out of their way to continue with the no hunting ordinance that has been in effect for some time. Absolutely no other animals can be hunted.

How can the legislature amend the hunting ordinance for only a small group of petitioners? What about hunters who would like to legally hunt deer? Why would they be excluded from the amended hunting ordinance? Some legislators and town officials will answer that hunting is not allowed in Westport.

Yet if the legislature approves the petition to trap and kill coyotes then hunting is already allowed in Westport. Trapping is no different than hunting because the coyote is killed after he is trapped either by a gunshot to the brain or in the wild after he has been maimed by the trap and released and cannot survive because of the injuries caused by the trap. The myth that trapping is humane and non-lethal is complete and total fiction.

Therefore since hunting is now most definitely legal after the hunting ordinance has been amended then deer hunters would now be able to successfully petition to hunt deer. After the legislature has passed and amended the ordinance they will surely exclude the deer hunters because some members of the public and animal rights activists view deer hunters as pariahs and outright criminals. This is obviously false because the majority of hunters are law abiding citizens who take hunting and safety seriously. Excluding deer hunters from the amended ordinance would be an example of blatant discrimination, prejudice, and outright political hypocrisy on the part of the legislators who decide to vote in favor of the amended exclusionary ordinance.